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Category talk:Julio-Claudians
This is exciting. Turtle Fan 01:03, September 22, 2009 (UTC) :It briefly occured to me that more Roman Empire AH from HT would be welcome, but then I remembered just how much Roman AH there is from other authors. I'd rather HT did something else. TR 03:52, September 22, 2009 (UTC) ::I'd like to see a Napoleonic AH. Something where the good guys win and nineteenth century European history isn't spent setting the world up for twentieth century history--at least, not the horrible, horrible, horrible version of OTL. ::If it's to be premodern history, I'd like to see something non-Western--Western premodern history gets way too much coverage in everything, including AH; before 1492, Europe was the home of just one hermetically-sealed localized cultural group among many, and from 1492 till at least the mid-18th century, and more like the mid-19th, Europe and its derivatives like the US still didn't have the oomph to subdue any but the crudest of cultures, like the Australian aborigines, and make theirs supreme. AH seems uniquely situated to point this out, but it doesn't. The only works I can think of that do so are "Islands in the Sea" and one or two Zheng He stories. Well there's In High Places and Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt, but those are a little different--they take Western culture off the board altogether. ::Of course, there are some stones in pre-modern European history that AH writers have left unturned that I'd like to see examined. Francois II of France is healthy and fertile and he fathers a son on Mary Queen of Scots. If Elizabeth dies childless, France and a united Britain are all joined under one crown. So English potentates desperately try everything they can think of to get their Virgin Queen married and reproductive to spare themselves the humiliation of becoming their hereditary enemy's bitch. Given the obvious threat to Hapsburg interests in Western Europe, you might even see marriage proposals coming to London from Spain--which means Philip acknowledging that Elizabeth is the rightful Queen of England, dancing dangerously close to saying Henry's divorce from his great-aunt was legitimate and even risking papal ire for recognizing a heretic and excommunicant over the Catholic claimant. It would all be mightily fun to watch. ::While I'm wishing for books that HT will never write, though, the thing I'd like to see above all others is a revisitation of the Worldwar series, but from a very different angle--stories of Home's ancient history, and of the conquests of the Rabotevs and Hallessi. Let's get a look at what they were like before they got all gingery and humbled, something more than the awkward sneering arrogance of the first half of ItB in which HT was just getting a feel for their society while saying "Hey, look! Bad guys!" To reread that now, as I've done a few times mostly looking for fodder for our little racket here, I feel more like I'm watching an early Next Generation episode where they're trying to make the Ferengi look scary. Turtle Fan 05:23, September 22, 2009 (UTC) :Continuing these thoughts--I don't even need much ancient history. Any story with a POD before 1861, any story with a POD between 1861-1865 that isn't set in the US, and any POD set between 1865 and 1939 would be just fine. TR 15:21, October 6, 2009 (UTC) ::Our best bet might be another Revolution story. Turtle Fan 19:01, October 6, 2009 (UTC) :::I was hoping for a Texas republic story. Or maybe some Franco-Prussian War stuff. :) ::::That would be helpful. Maybe one set in the Counterreformation in which a whole shitload of people get excommunicated, hmm? For joining the Masons, perhaps? Turtle Fan 22:00, October 6, 2009 (UTC) :::A Revolution story might be nice though. Especially if it was set shortly after the POD a la HFR. TR 19:15, October 6, 2009 (UTC) ::::Like Stirling's "The Charge of Lee's Brigade"? I enjoyed that one. Damn all the creative PODs being wasted on short stories that can't develop them. ::::If he's going to do something in early 19th century American history I'd prefer he do a PoD from one of the issues that came up in the establishment of the Republic. Rhode Island attends the Constitutional Convention and the northern states use their numerical advantage to turn up the press against slavery, and the south bolts; that, or abolitionists are incensed that the northern states did not do so, and it's the north that refuses to ratify. That or the US gets pushed into a more active role in the French Revolution's spinoff wars. Maybe a story about President Burr hijacking the whole thing, and the United States of America never amounts to more than a backwater tinpot dictatorship. ::::A Revolution story would not be as done to death as ACW and WWII, but it's not exactly a fallow field, either. Almost all AH seems to be centered around a few well-known events--I suppose that's the trade-off we make for the wealth of material and easy accessability we get from having the primary means of disseminating the genre come through a mass entertainment medium. I think it's no coincidence that the most creative AHs tend to be short stories; their PODs are too obscure for anyone but an academic publisher to run with them, and academic publishers have a tendency to kill AH's soul, or at least dial it down way too much, no doubt an influence of anti-AH historians. ::::I didn't read the XTime novels, they didn't interest me except perhaps DSA, but at least most of them took at least a few steps off the beaten path. I suppose that's got something to do with how kitschy they were. Turtle Fan 22:00, October 6, 2009 (UTC)